UnicodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: invalid start byte, python

Description

UnicodeError is an error message that is raised when a sequence of bytes is passed that cannot be decoded using the ‘utf-8’ codec.

Reason of error

This error is caused when an invalid byte is encountered in the given string, which is not a valid utf-8 character. It can also be caused when the string is encoded in another format, such as ASCII, and the ‘utf-8’ codec is used to decode it.

Example code


string = b'xffxfe'

decoded_string = string.decode('utf-8')

Solution to solve issue

The solution is to make sure that the string is encoded in the correct format, such as utf-8, before attempting to decode it. If the string is already encoded in another format, such as ASCII, then the ‘utf-8’ codec should not be used to decode it.